


More Things in Heaven and Earth

by Frea_O



Series: The Fatesverse [12]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chuck (TV)
Genre: AU, Alternate Ending, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Freeform, Crossover, F/M, Fatesverse, Hallowhedon Challenge, What Fates Impose, chuck - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 22:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a night of simple stargazing is rudely interrupted, Chuck and Sarah witness something even hardened government agents aren't supposed to see.  Alternate ending to Chapter 38 (A Day in the Life) of <i>What Fates Impose</i>.  Plays fast and loose with <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i> mythology and timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Things in Heaven and Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. – _Stephen King_

**28 NOVEMBER 2007  
DAVENPORT ESTATE  
21:29 EST**

“Where’d Sarah get off to?” Chuck asked as he dried the last plate. He craned his neck, but he didn’t see Sarah sitting on the couch or anywhere else in the communal kitchen/living area of the guest house. It made him frown. He was usually a lot more aware of Sarah’s presence, but she must have slipped out during Awesome’s musings about where to go in DC.

“Outside, I think,” Awesome said, not looking up from the guide book. “She said something about fresh air.”

“Oh.” Chuck wasn’t sure what to think about that. He shrugged to himself and picked up his beer since there was still half of it left. He’d finish it back in the main house while he read his book. “Guess that’s my cue to go, then.”

“You don’t have to go, Chuck.”

“No, it’s okay.” Chuck smiled and kissed his sister on the cheek. “I’m almost to the end of my book, and then I think I’m going to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“Okay. Good night, then.”

Chuck bade Ellie a good night, clapped Awesome on the shoulder, and made his exit, his jacket over his arm. He was about to hurry across the lawn when he spotted Sarah. It took only a smile from her for him to change his path and join her by the pool. She had her jeans rolled to her knees, her feet dangling in the deep end of the pool. Her shoes and socks were neatly lined up on the pool’s edge next to her.

“I already miss L.A. weather,” she told him without preamble. “I don’t like being cold.”

“Seconded.” Chuck gingerly lowered himself to the ground. His body still ached from his fight with Leader a few days before. “Also I’m pretty sure another one of Awesome’s superior genetic traits is that he’s impervious to cold.”

“Probably. He’s pretty awesome.”

“Indeed.”

Sarah held a hand out for the beer and Chuck passed it over. She took a swig and handed it back.

“Too lazy to get your own?” Chuck asked, smiling.

“Got the first rounds tonight. Just a sip for me.”

“Oh.” Chuck set the beer between them. After a few seconds of thought, he started untying his shoes. Halfway through, he paused. “You, uh, don’t want to be alone, do you?”

“Nah, I’m good. Water’s warm.” Sarah leaned down and flicked some at him, gently.

She was telling the truth, Chuck decided after he’d rolled his pants up and slid his feet into the water. Russ Davenport had to pull in quite a bit at work, he decided, for the Davenports to afford a heated pool and such a nice estate. He didn’t imagine Gwen’s salary, even if she led the task force of representatives, had to be all that great.

He eased back, resting his palms against the ground so that he could look up at the night sky. Growing up in L.A., stargazing hadn’t been all that easy, but he had gone out to the desert a couple of times with Ellie when they were teenagers and neither had any money, just to watch the stars and talk. It amazed him and made his blood run cold by turns that he had spent five years never looking at the stars.

It didn’t amaze him when Sarah nudged his arm with her elbow. She was either a mind-reader—and Chuck hoped this wasn’t the case—or she had memorized his facial expressions because she always seemed to know whenever his thoughts took a dark turn. He looked over at her and forced an absent smile even as he pushed thoughts of the bunker to the back of his mind. “What’s up?”

“You’re a nerd,” Sarah said.

Chuck blinked. “Oh, God, did my spending hours a day on the computer give it away?”

She grinned. “Not what I meant. I’m just curious. You know anything about…” She trailed off and nodded.

After a few seconds, Chuck realized she was nodding up at the stars. “Astronomy?” he asked. “I took a couple of courses in college, and I’ve read up on it. What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Anything. The stars out on the Point were just amazing, but I never really knew anything about them, except which is the North Star.”

“Hm. Okay.” Chuck scanned the sky for a moment. “Okay, there, do you see that W-shaped constellation?” He leaned closer to Sarah and pointed.

It took her a minute to reply. “Yeah, I think?”

“Close enough for government work. That’s Cassiopeia. Not really a role model, as she was kind of vain and boasted about her beauty.”

“Does this story have a moral attached to it?” Sarah asked, stealing the beer for another sip.

Chuck grinned over at her. “I doubt you’d let anybody hang you upside down for half of eternity, even if you were vain.”

“Probably not,” Sarah agreed.

“Cassie up there was the wife of Cepheus. What happened, and this is just one version of the tale and also me dealing with a patchy memory, but she claimed that she and…I think it was her daughter? Yeah, her daughter, Andromeda. She said she and Andromeda were prettier than these demigoddesses, which of course pissed good old Poseidon, god of the sea, off. And he flooded the country.”

“I’m guessing he had a temper,” Sarah said.

“Oh, definitely.” Chuck squinted up at the constellation for a moment. “Cepheus and Cassie were told the only way to soothe ruffled feathers was to sacrifice their daughter, so they chained her to a rock by the sea to be sacrificed—don’t worry, she got rescued—but Poseidon didn’t think that was enough, so he strapped Cassiopeia to a torture chair. It’s said to hang upside down for half the year.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Oh, you know those Greeks, they like their happy stories.”

“Clearly.” Sarah picked up the beer, which only had a couple of swallows left inside it. Her hand paused halfway to her mouth. Chuck, likewise, stilled when Sarah’s hand went to her gun.

“What?” he asked, immediately drawing his feet from the water. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. I heard something. Go inside.”

Even though his instincts screamed at him to obey, Chuck didn’t move. “And leave you out here by yourself?”

Sarah yanked out her gun and gave him an exasperated look.

“Oh, right,” Chuck said. He snatched up his phone.

“What are you doing? I told you to go inside!”

“I’m calling Casey for backup, and then I’ll go inside,” Chuck said.

Sarah glared. “Call Casey for backup _as_ you go inside.”

“Oh, right. Good idea.” Chuck grabbed his shoes and turned to obey, but something out of the corner of his eye blurred, catching his attention. He didn’t shout, and if asked about later, he would have no idea why he hadn’t. He simply reacted, dropping the beer, phone, and shoes. And then he drove his shoulder into Sarah’s stomach at a leap, sending them both flying. There was the clatter of everything hitting the pavement and one intense, suspended moment as there was nothing but air and the night cold.

They hit the water and immediately Chuck’s world changed. He had one shocking moment of the feel of cold against his skin, and then everything was blue and dark and disorienting.

He clawed his way up, not an easy task as he’d somehow wrapped himself around Sarah, and for a moment, he didn’t know which way was up. He broke the surface with a gasp, already intending to turn and start scrambling away.

What he saw standing over the pool should have made him scramble faster. Instead, he froze.

It wasn’t human.

Or maybe it was, and it had really good cosmetics or a natural birth defect (and a loving mother, for only a mother could love that face) or intense plastic surgery. It was man-shaped, and wearing men’s clothing, but its forehead and face were bumpy and mottled, and frankly disgusting. That wasn’t the frightening part, though. The beast stared down at Chuck and Sarah in the pool with alien yellow-green eyes, eyes that would never have been considered natural. And Chuck could practically feel the hunger rolling off of them in sharp, intense waves as the creature stared down.

Run, his brain told him. Run fast.

But he didn’t move. And weirdly enough, neither did the creature. It just continued to stare.

Shouldn’t it have attacked by now?

Confused, Chuck followed his first instinct: he looked to Sarah for guidance. And in a flash that required no Intersect at all, he understood why the creature might be staring. He hadn’t even thought about it when he had tackled her into the pool, but Sarah Walker was wearing a white shirt.

And apparently Sarah in a white, wet shirt was enough to enthrall even the supernatural, for there could be no question that this was what they faced.

She shoved her hair back out of her face, ending the creature’s spell. “Chuck, r—!”

The creature/man/beast let out a roar mingled with a human scream and nails on a chalkboard. Even despite his waterlogged clothing, Chuck jumped about two feet and ripped his gaze away from the front of Sarah’s (very see-through) shirt. Oh, God, he thought somewhere in the part of his brain that wasn’t terrified, the supernatural is real and it’s about to kill me.

A whistling sound struck the air.

A split-second later, something hit the water. The splash was quiet, but the velocity and force drove up quite the wave of water as the object—which looked just shorter than one of Sarah’s forearms—skidded across the surface.

Was that a _stake_?

Chuck’s head whipped around. If there was a stake nearby, surely there had to be a Van Hels—

Something sprang from the darkness of the copse of trees surrounding the Davenport estate. Like the creature screaming his rage from the edge of the pool, this was also human shaped, but thanks to a mixture of chlorine in his eyes and fear, Chuck couldn’t make out much more than that. It moved like a dark blur across the frozen, snow-dotted grass, patches of light from the house and pool catching it as it raced. The creature standing over the pool hissed and opened his mouth to reveal a set of incisors that would given any dentist nightmares. And then it ran at the blurry would-be savior.

Chuck’s jaw dropped as the two creatures met halfway, as though the poolside grass were a field of battle. He’d seen Sarah in kung fu mode before, but right away, he could see that the person fighting the creature—the vampire—put even her to shame. Sarah was fast and agile and strong, but this being seemed faster and stronger. In fact, the speed and grace seemed exactly equal to the vampire. The fight was a dirty one, all elbows and knees and blows to the body that seemed to echo in the winter air.

“Shouldn’t you shoot one of them?” Chuck asked Sarah, though he figured bullets wouldn’t be much use against a vampire.

And why the hell was he suddenly thinking vampires were real? It was just a Halloween costume. A really impressive one.

In late November.

Right.

Sarah jolted and reached for her holster automatically, swearing when she realized that she had evidently dropped the gun on the pavement during Chuck’s tackle. “Get inside,” she hissed at him as she began to wade toward the gun.

“Honestly, I think I’m safer with you,” Chuck hissed back, following her. “Or with _him_.”

Though he had meant the savior, across the clearing, the vampire paused, possibly distracted by their words. It turned its face toward them for a millisecond too long, giving the figure in black just the opening he or she needed. With a grunt, the first noise their savior had made, the person whipped out another stake just like the first and rammed it without pause into the vampire’s chest.

Chuck winced. That looked like it had _hurt_.

Indeed, the vampire’s eerie green eyes widened in shock for just a second before it exploded.

Literally.

Dust flew everywhere, as if somebody had packed a PVC pipe full of it and strapped on a cherry bomb. It blew outward, scattering in the wind across the Davenport lawn and drifting over to the shocked observers, oddly colored snow. Chuck spat up what he could in disgust, before it hit him.

He had just seen a man—no, a vampire, an actual vampire—turned into dust.

“Stay here!” Sarah’s voice shoved through the daze, and he blinked to see her surge over the lip of the pool like a water goddess, streaming chlorinated water in her wake. She snatched up her abandoned S&W on the run and took off after their savior. Whoever it was, however, wasn’t sticking around to make friends. By the time Sarah had even reached the edge of the pavement, bare feet slapping loudly in the night, the person had raced off into the woods.

Chuck did as he was told for nearly a full minute only because he couldn’t think well enough to move yet. And then, when the fuzz and fog finally dissipated from his mind, he uttered the only thing he could: “What. The. _Hell_?”

 **28 NOVEMBER 2007  
DAVENPORT ESTATE  
21:46 EST**

He’d attempted to wait for Sarah on the edge of the pool, but that had proven far too cold after a couple of minutes in the winter wind. So when Sarah came limping back, swearing, she found him standing in the deep end of the Davenport pool, watching her with wide eyes.

“Did that really happen?” he asked right away. “I’m not going crazy, right? Tell me I’m not going crazy.”

“If you’re going crazy, I am, too.” Sarah looked winded as she looked around at their possessions, which had been scattered by Chuck’s tackle. The beer bottle, mostly empty, lay on its side and slowly dripped beer onto the pavement next to Chuck’s iPhone. “Are you okay?”

Chuck nodded. “Are _you_?”

“I’m…cold. What are you still doing in the pool?”

“You said stay here and it was too cold to get out.”

Sarah glared. “Why didn’t you go inside?”

“You said stay here,” Chuck repeated.

“You only take me literally when it works to your benefit,” Sarah said under her breath, and Chuck wondered if he was supposed to hear that. He didn’t dwell on that thought long. For one thing, Sarah had stepped more clearly into the light, and he could see very, very clearly just how translucent her shirt had gone thanks to the water, and the fact that her jeans were clinging to her like a wet, second skin. She was evidently wearing a pink bra…and it was very cold outside.

He knew it was impolite to stare, but he doubted that any soul on earth would blame him right at that moment.

“Chuck.”

Chuck blinked. The tone in Sarah’s voice told him right away that it hadn’t been the first time she had said his name. He felt the blush start somewhere around his toes and begin rising.

Sarah seemed unfortunately able to read his thoughts again. “Eyes are up here,” she said, pointing at her face.

Chuck nodded and ripped his gaze away, staring into the dark woods beyond.

A second later, he heard a splash and looked over in surprise. Sarah had lowered herself into the pool once more. “It’s _cold_ ,” she said, almost accusingly, when he opened his mouth to ask. “I’m just going to warm up for a minute while I process.”

“Uh-huh,” Chuck said. “Sarah, did we really see a vamp—a vampire get killed by some mysterious shadowy figure?”

“I really hope so,” Sarah said, wading past him in the water. He made a manful effort not to stare at her chest, but it was hard with the shirt swirling around and the water rising just to the top of her—focus, Chuck! He began to recite the periodic table of the elements in his head until Sarah’s voice cut through his concentration once more. She sounded sardonic. “Because if not, then I’m starting to hallucinate, and I really hope that’s not the case. Did you put something in that beer?”

“Probably just backwash,” Chuck said honestly, and Sarah grimaced.

“I don’t know about you,” she said after a minute, “but I don’t think many cold-blooded killers walk around with these anymore. So, I’m thinking either we’re _still_ hallucinating or…we just saw a vampire get dusted.”

“Dusted?” Chuck asked, taking the object Sarah held out to him. The stake the savior had thrown past the vampire, into the pool. It was a little shorter than he had suspected, tapered to a deadly point and oddly smooth around the handle. If his brain weren’t constantly shutting down on everything he had seen that night, he would have claimed it probably got a lot of use.

Sarah wrinkled her nose. “Turned into dust? Dusted?”

“Oh, I thought you meant the thing with the dust mop and the relatives coming ov—mmph.”

Never in his wildest dreams would he ever imagine that Sarah would grab the front of his shirt and yank. He went forward, or maybe she did, but it didn’t seem to matter, since Sarah wrapped both arms around him and kissed him. His free hand came up instinctively to rest on her lower back, feeling the way the water turned her dress shirt to silk and how even in the pool and the cold, her body seemed to radiate heat. There was nothing to do but kiss her back, given how fervently she was attacking him with her lips and, yes, that was definitely her tongue.

He dropped the stake. It hit the water with a splash that lapped against his hands on Sarah’s back, but he didn’t care. His hand grabbed Sarah’s upper arm, pulling her closer even as she snaked an arm around his neck so that there was absolutely no distance between their bodies. And thanks to the fact that they were both soaked to the skin, there might not have been any clothing there at all.

When Sarah broke the kiss, they were both gasping.

“W-what did you do that for?” he asked, his eyes fluttering open. He could feel his heart actually hammering against his ribcage.

He was surprised to see her grin, of all things. “Because if it really was a hallucination, then I’m going to make the most out of it.”

“I’ve got no problem with that,” Chuck managed to say in a normal voice.

“However, now we’ve got to get inside and figure out what we tell Casey, if anything.” Sarah nibbled on her bottom lip, and Chuck’s brain fuzzed once again, but she only gave him an assessing look. “I looked all over the place, but I didn’t see any more…vampires or our rescuer. Still, I’d like to get you inside before I do another check.”

“And probably put on dry clothing,” Chuck said. “Though I can’t say I mind the current look…”

Sarah laughed and shoved him under the water.

 **28 NOVEMBER 2007  
DAVENPORT ESTATE  
21:52 EST**

They had taken that…rather well.

The shadowy, mysterious figure, as she had been dubbed, tailed the soaked couple from a distance as they raced across the yard, yelping at the bits of snow against their frozen feet. They had to be colder than anything in the ninth level of Dante’s Inferno, but they didn’t actually gripe as they darted across the lawn. In fact, she was pretty positive they wouldn’t have noticed her if it had been broad daylight. Still, the figure clung to the shadows, a move that proved prudent when the blonde spy glanced over her shoulder before following her partner into the house, that long blue gaze sweeping over the yard once.

The spy was good, and even more than that, she was fast. She had provided quite the adrenaline-fueled chase, even barefoot in the dead of winter in the woods.

And then, within minutes of seeing their first vamp dusted, the couple had been kissing, and laughing. That was the strangest thing about it all had been how fast they could laugh after seeing that.

The first time she had slayed a vamp, it had taken her days to remember how to laugh.

But that was probably because preparing for her first year of medical school had been a bitch, and she had been a nervous wreck besides.

Once she was sure that the others had gone into the house, she allowed her body to relax, though she kept her senses tuned to the world around her. It was the second night in a new territory, and there had already been a vampire attack, which meant there was either another Slayer close by attracting trouble, or no Slayers around to police the situation.

Ellie Bartowski pulled off her mask and sighed. She really hoped it was the former, and not the latter. As the newest member of the NSA, she had enough on her plate.

28 NOVEMBER 2007  
DAVENPORT ESTATE  
21:55 EST

Ellie let herself into the cottage. Thanks to her Slayer senses, she had heard every word spoken between Chuck and Sarah, so she knew that her blonde roommate would be up at the main house for awhile, possibly macking on Ellie’s brother. Their first kiss—and Ellie was positive it had been their first kiss—had been fairly adorable in a racy, chlorinated sort of way. Though she really needed to give Chuck a few tips at some point: some women might like the dazed, hit-by-a-truck look, but that might get old fast.

She heard footsteps coming from the cottage’s sole bedroom. “Hey, babe, I changed the sheets and—”

“We’re alone,” Ellie told him.

Instantly, Devon’s voice changed. His American accent was deeper, cast after the model of fraternity members across the nation, but Ellie much preferred his natural accent. His eyes widened as he took in the dark outfit, the discarded mask in her hand. “I’ll be! Already, a vampire here? Did you run into any trouble?”

“Newly hatched,” Ellie told him, smiling. “Dumb as a box of concrete chickens, too. I dusted him, no problem.”

“Excellent!” Devon beamed and pulled a small notebook from his pocket to mark down the kill. His hand paused halfway to the notebook. “Why do I sense something amiss?”

“Um, because Chuck and Sarah might have seen me?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“From afar,” Ellie said, wincing inwardly. “I didn’t have much of a choice. The vamp was going after them and I had to act.”

A frown graced Devon’s face. His British mannerisms always made him seem so _different_. She had fallen for him before she had even known he had been sent from the Council in England to watch over her. Of course, he probably hadn’t had time to tell her about that before she’d all but shoved him into a closet for first-day greetings at med school. She might have dusted her first vampire a week before, but apparently feelings like that built until an explosion point, and Devon had been her (willing) victim.

Now, years later, they were still together. The Council didn’t approve, but they had other problems right now with the original Slayers running around and wreaking hell as they were wont to do. The only thing that could destroy Ellie and Devon’s relationship now was her. She had given it her best shot when Chuck had disappeared all of those years ago, the last link left in her family to abandon her, but Devon had steadfastly refused to vanish completely from her life.

“So do they know?” Devon asked, still frowning. “If they do, I’m afraid I have to contact the Council immediately, a CIA agent knowing about a Slayer could be disastrous and—”

“No, no,” Ellie said quickly. “They don’t know. They didn’t get a good look at me.”

“Are you positive?” Devon asked.

“Sarah chased me through the woods for a little bit, but she never got close enough to see it was me. It was dark.” When Devon still looked dubious, Ellie wrapped her cold fingers around one of his wrists. “It was dark. They don’t know.”

“But they did see a vampire get…killed?” Devon’s inherent Britishness, the fact that he had studied at Cambridge like his father and brothers before him, refused to let him say “dusted,” which Ellie had always found cute. “How did they rationalize it?”

“They’re still half-convinced they were hallucinating,” Ellie said.

Devon frowned and brushed a bit of dust off of Ellie’s shoulder. “You’d best get changed, then, before Agent Walker comes back and puts it together,” he said.

Ellie didn’t bother to stop the smile. “Oh, poor me, I might have hurt my shoulder going after that big, bad vampire, and now I can’t seem to get my shirt off. What’s a poor Slayer to do?”

“You’ve been spending too much time around Buffy again,” Devon said, smiling back. “But I guess this would fall under the Watcher’s responsibilities. Just this once, perhaps?”

“I thought that might be the case,” Ellie said, and laughed as she raced him back to the cottage’s only bedroom. That was one of her favorite parts about Slaying. Sure, it sucked to take a hit from a wily vampire, and if you lost the fight, there was another literal kind of sucking, but dusting a vamp, besting a vamp…very little could match that sense of euphoria and release except for the post-Slaying sport of choice. And she had always prided herself on being an athlete of the top form.

Later, much later, she lay in a sleepy state of half-existence, drowsing while Devon made a run into the kitchen to fetch them a couple of waters. It had come so close, she couldn’t help but think. If she’d been another second later with that stake, or if Chuck hadn’t acted as fast as he had by jumping at Sarah and sending them both headfirst into the water, she would have lost a roommate or a brother. The thought made her shudder. She had lost her brother once, and she had thought it had been for good. Being a Slayer hadn’t even been enough to save him.

But he was back, she told herself. He was back, and he had an NSA agent and a CIA agent protecting him. And most importantly of all, he had a Slayer by his side. The others could fight terrorists, but Ellie knew from her predecessors that she could fight the apocalypse (even if she hoped it would never come to that).

She stirred a bit from her worry when she heard the front door of the cottage open, and Sarah’s intake of surprised breath. “Ah, Awe—Devon! Hi. I didn’t realize you were still awake?” Ellie’s roommate said.

Devon switched back to the American persona. “Agent Sarah! Hey! Just getting a couple of H-Two-Ohs,” he said. “Have a good rounds? Chuckster all set up for the night?”

“Ah, yeah.” There was hesitation and mystification in Sarah’s voice, but she didn’t sound outright terrified. It would take a lot more than a vampire turning to dust to shake a hardened CIA agent to the core, Ellie knew. She felt a little spurt of pride at that. “Everything’s all quiet, ah, on the eastern front.”

“Most excellent.” There was a pause and then the slap of a high-five being exchanged, and Ellie had to smile against her pillow. Sarah still hadn’t gotten used to that habit of Devon’s. “Well, my lady is thirsty, so here’s where I leave you. Good night, Sarah.”

“Night, Devon.”

Though she heard Devon come back in and set a glass of water on her nightstand, Ellie didn’t roll over or open her eyes. After a minute, he settled in behind her, one arm going around her waist like it always did. He would be asleep within minutes, she knew. Devon rarely let worry keep him awake, while some nights it took her hours to fall asleep. He would always laugh and say that aside from Council duties, she did all of the worrying in the relationship. She would always reply that she wished she could share.

She drifted now, trying not to think about the current worries on her mind even as she replayed the evening’s events. The barbecue had been inspired on Devon’s part, and she had genuinely seen her brother relax around the fire pit, surrounded by agents and friends. If only she had done a better job on her rounds and spotted that rogue vampire sooner!

 _I don’t know about you, but I don’t think many cold-blooded killers walk around with these anymore. So, I’m thinking either we’re still hallucinating or…we just saw a vampire get dusted._

Sarah’s words finally caught up to Ellie.

She nearly sat bolt upright in bed, though she managed to quell the instinct at the last moment so that she wouldn’t wake Devon.

Dusted? How did Sarah know that particular terminology? Slayers were a little more well-known in some circles, but not any of the ones Sarah Walker should have been traveling in. It had to be just a coincidence, right? Right?

Dread began to boil in Ellie’s stomach. Quickly, she tossed back the contents of her water glass and clutched the empty cup to her chest, careful not to grip too tightly and crack it, something that had been a distressing problem in her first days as a Slayer. Hoping that Sarah had fallen asleep and that this whole thing was just one big coincidence, Ellie eased open the door to the bedroom and peered out into the dim hallway beyond. The lights were still on in the living room, but that could just mean Sarah wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Maybe she was awake, reliving that kiss with Chuck. It had seemed pretty steamy, the steam rising from their bodies in the November cold notwithstanding.

Ellie moved down the hall, almost silently. She could move without sound if she chose, but that would alert Sarah.

She needn’t have bothered. Sarah was sitting on the couch, wearing sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt with a mug of tea clutched in her hand.

One glance at her was all Ellie needed.

“So,” Sarah said. “When were you going to inform me that I was living with a Slayer?”


End file.
